LAST UPDATE | 24 Nov 2024

ENVIRONMENT MINISTER SIMON Harris has said this year’s climate finance agreement struck at COP29 is a “starting point” for fairness, while some nations have called the $300 billion pledge “abysmally poor”.

Leaders approved the bitterly negotiated deal overnight, where wealthier countries made a financial commitment to help poorer countries most impacted by natural disasters.

After two exhausting weeks of chaotic bargaining and sleepless nights, nearly 200 nations banged through the contentious finance pact in the early hours in a sports stadium in Azerbaijan.

But the applause had barely subsided in Baku when India delivered a full-throated rejection of the dollar-figure just agreed.

“The amount that is proposed to be mobilised is abysmally poor. It’s a paltry sum,” said Indian delegate Chandni Raina.

“This document is little more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face.”

Meanwhile, Minister Ryan, who was Ireland’s representative at the over-two-weeks-long conference, said the deal is “far from perfect” but it’s better than none at all.

“To walk away would have been unforgivable and shameful given the scale of the crisis we all face.

“This agreement is far from perfect and it does not go nearly far enough, particularly on mitigation, gender and human rights – but it keeps the core principles of the Paris Agreement alive and it gives us a basis to work from as we move forward to make COP30 in Brazil transformational.”

Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week in Politics, former President Mary Robinson said that it was “very doable” to make amendments to counter the climate crisis, telling the programme that there is a two trillion spend on fossil fuels and “very bad land management” each year.

“If we could switch even a third of that, we could incentivise and really move much, much faster, and we need to tell a very positive story to encourage people to move fast. And that story is true. We are on the cusp of a much better world. It will be a renewable energy powered world, circular economy, no waste,” she said. 

Green Party TD Neasa Hourigan, speaking on the same programme, agreed with her former party leader Eamon Ryan on the agreement not being sufficient. 

“COP 29 had an unprecedented precedent level of fossil fuel lobbying to try and push it off course and to undermine the principle that we move away from fossil fuels, and in that they failed,” Hourigan said.

“Is the money enough? It is absolutely not enough, but it does put us on a pathway towards the 1.3 trillion by 2035 and certainly in that there is work to be done and to ensure that that Global Financing is not just loans on the market value, but grants to those countries that need it most.”

On Ireland’s own climate fund, Hourigan said there had been no decision and no agreement on its implementation, despite the Greens’ wish for a decision to have been made at cabinet before the budget in October.

“It’s a huge fund. It would have impacted every sector of society, and we could not get agreement on it, which was not just disappointing, but very surprising,” she said.

‘F U to climate justice’

Nations had struggled to reconcile long-standing divisions over how much rich nations most accountable for historic climate change should provide to poorer countries least responsible but most impacted.

EU climate envoy Wopke Hoekstra said COP29 would be remembered as “the start of a new era for climate finance”.

Sleep-deprived diplomats, huddled in anxious groups, were still revising the final phrasing on the plenary floor hours before the deal passed.

At points, the talks appeared on the brink of collapse, with developing nations storming out of meetings and threatening to walk away should rich nations not cough up more cash.

In the end – despite repeating that no deal is better than a bad deal – they did not stand in the way of an agreement, despite it falling well short of what they wanted.

Ireland’s Friends of the Earth said the deal is “a big F U to climate justice, to the poorest communities who are on the frontlines of climate breakdown”.

“COP29 has failed those who have done least to cause climate change and who are most vulnerable to climate breakdown because the process is still in thrall to fossil fuel bullies and rich countries more committed to shirking their historical responsibility than safeguarding our common future.

“Now it’s back to citizens to demand our governments do the right thing. We must keep demanding the trillions, not billions owed in climate debt and a comprehensive, swift and equitable fossil fuel phase-out. The struggle for climate justice is not over.”

The final deal commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developed countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters.

That is up from $100 billion under an existing pledge but was slammed as offensively low by developing nations who had demanded much more.

“This COP has been a disaster for the developing world,” said Mohamed Adow, the Kenyan director of Power Shift Africa, a think tank.

“It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries who claim to take climate change seriously.”

‘No time for victory laps’

A group of 134 developing countries had pushed for at least $500 billion from rich governments to build resilience against climate change and cut emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The hope is that the money from developed countries will help boost private investment to reach an ambitious goal – written into the deal – of delivering at least $1.3 trillion per year by the next decade.

That is the amount that experts commissioned by the United Nations said was needed by 2035.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell acknowledged the deal was imperfect.

“No country got everything they wanted, and we leave Baku with a mountain of work still to do. So this is no time for victory laps,” he said in a statement.

The United States and EU have wanted newly wealthy emerging economies like China – the world’s largest emitter – to chip in.

The final deal “encourages” developing countries to make contributions on a voluntary basis, reflecting no change for China, which already provides climate finance on its own terms.

Wealthy nations said it was politically unrealistic to expect more in direct government funding.

Donald Trump, a sceptic of both climate change and foreign assistance, returns to the White House in January and a number of other Western countries have seen right-wing backlashes against the green agenda.

The deal posits a larger overall target of $1.3 trillion per year to cope with rising temperatures and disasters, but most would come from private sources.

Wealthy countries and small island nations were also concerned by efforts led by Saudi Arabia to water down calls from last year’s summit in Dubai to phase out fossil fuels.

The main texts proposed in Baku lacked any explicit mention of the Dubai commitment to “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.

A number of countries had accused Azerbaijan, an authoritarian oil and gas exporter, of lacking the experience and will to meet the moment, as the planet again sets temperature records and faces rising deadly disasters.

With reporting by Emma Hickey

© AFP 2024